Reflections on The Institutes: Out of the Labyrinth

Written by Michael Worrall

In chapter 5 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin is pointing out that God makes himself known to mankind through both fashioning and governing the universe. After ten paragraphs detailing how God’s wisdom, creativity, sovereignty, and judgment are revealed in his sustained creation, Calvin pivots to show how despite all of this mankind still wanders away into confusion and fails to worship God. He says, “For each man’s mind is like a labyrinth, so that it is no wonder that individual nations were drawn aside into various falsehoods; and not only this - but individual men, almost, had their own gods.”

The problem, Calvin says, is not that God has failed to reveal himself, but that our minds are labyrinths filled with twists and turns and dead-ends. Our thoughts, which ought to be stayed on God, can’t escape our own heads. He concludes that this trapped, rattling mental life doesn’t just lead individual men and women into falsehood and confusion, but entire nations. Calvin isn’t surprised that individual confusion and falsehood has corporate consequences, he assumes it! 

This is fascinating to me in our cultural moment where systemic sin is being debated. Why is it so hard for us to believe that our nation is still staggering from the drunkenness of slavery and segregation? Why is it so hard for us to believe that our businesses, communities, courts, and churches have been “drawn aside into various falsehoods” like arrogance, greed and injustice? It seems corporate and systemic sin (at least idolatry) aren’t up for debate in Calvin’s mind. If individual men are confused in their own minds “it is no wonder” that the nations, communities, and organizations they make up will be led into similar confusion and falsehood. 

Fortunately, God doesn’t leave us lost in the maze of our minds, wandering forever into confusion. “We must come,” Calvin says, “to the Word, where God is truly and vividly described to us from his works...If we turn aside from the Word, as I have just now said, though we may strive with strenuous haste, yet, since we have got off track, we shall never reach the goal. For...the divine countenance... is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word; so that it is better to limp along this path than to dash with all speed outside it.”

The way out of our falsehood and into intimate knowledge of God is to be “conducted into [God’s presence] by the thread of the Word.” There we see God “truly and vividly described to us from his works.” Perhaps we have been “[striving] with strenuous haste” on the tracks of progress, status, and self-righteousness when what is needed is to stop, backtrack, and “limp along” the way of Jesus in confession, repentance, and neighborly love.

Reflections on The Institutes: Calvin’s Memento Mori

Written by Jesse Furey

“Innumerable are the evils that beset human life; innumerable, too, the deaths that threaten it. We need not go beyond ourselves: since our body is the receptacle of a thousand diseases—in fact holds within itself and fosters the causes of diseases—a man cannot go about unburdened by many forms of his own destruction, and without drawing out a life enveloped, as it were, with death.”  Book I, ch. 17, 10

John Calvin, the 16th century French Reformer, began his career as a budding academic by publishing a substantial commentary on Seneca’s De Clementia. Seneca was a first century Roman philosopher who was one of the most influential figures of the Stoic school of philosophy. The Stoics taught that the way to experience the good life (eudaimonia) was through accepting reality without being controlled by fear or pleasure, and through the patient cultivation of virtue. Even in popular culture, to be “stoic” is understood as an unusual coolness in the face of either pressure or pleasure. 

One way the Stoics promoted the acceptance of the circumstances of life and the cultivation of virtue in the midst of those circumstances was through the Memento Mori. Memento Mori is, literally, Death Reminder. The earliest practice of Memento Mori is believed to be an ancient Roman tradition—a victorious general returning from battle and parading before the cheering crowds would have a servant whispering to him, “look behind you, remember you are just a man, and remember you will die!” Whether it was the whispers of an aide, or skeletons in festivals, or a skull on your desk (the skull is the most familiar to us moderns—even occupying a central place in Marvel’s The Punisher character, though it is not clear whether his memento mori is for himself or others), for the Stoics, Memento Mori was a way of life. 

Seneca himself said, “Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day. … The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” This way of thinking is alien to most of us moderns. We have, for the most part, imbibed the enlightenment vision of everlasting life. The scientists (an honorable vocation, but one that has become our new white-robed priests) will figure it out and the machine will fix it and we will live forever, even if we have to colonize Mars to do it. Of course, this utopian vision crumbles in the midst of a global pandemic that shows no respect to our vision and no signs of ending anytime soon. We need a better approach to life. We need to recover the Memento Mori. 

Reading the Institutes, it is not hard to see the influence Seneca and the Stoics had on Calvin’s theology. Yet, they depart here. For the Stoics the key to life was balancing the books as if today was your last day alive. Calvin also highlights that our life is “enveloped...with death.” But the good life isn’t found in the impossible and exhausting work of balancing the books. Instead, Calvin’s Memento Mori turns our attention on the Providence of God. When our certain death joins with our joyous trust in God’s providence—this is the good life. 

Of course, we could take it one step further—to the hill of the Skull itself (Golgotha is Aramaic for “Skull”). The hill of Calvary and the cross of Christ is the most powerful Memento Mori there is. Providence and Death joined together in the broken body of the Eternal One, who would rise again to new and eternal life on the third day. This is why we carry the cross before us—a reminder of a death not ours. For Christ-followers, the cross is our reminder to live in reality because we will, in fact, die, but death has already lost its sting for us.

Postliminii iure: Behind the threshold in safekeeping

Written by Jesse Furey

In point three of his Prefatory address to King Francis, John Calvin defends the “newness” of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith by saying that it isn’t really new at all. After he skewers his accusers with a barb that he is not surprised that it is new to them, “since to them both Christ himself and his gospel are new,” he moves on to show that justification by faith alone is really as ancient as the word of God: “Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again for our justification” (Rom 4:25).

He goes on to say, “that it has lain long unknown and buried is the fault of man’s impiety. Now when it is restored to us by God’s goodness, its claim to antiquity ought to be admitted at least by right of recovery.” Right of recovery, or postliminii iure, is a Latin legal term for the recovery of property that has been in safekeeping behind the threshold. In other words, the doctrine of justification by faith is not new at all, but has been in safekeeping, waiting to be found by those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Those of us who are Protestant believe this is exactly what happened. Justification by faith alone was not a novel invention, but a theological retrieval of doctrine that had been held in safekeeping by God. The Reformers took great pains to establish this by an appeal to the Scriptures and the writings of the church fathers, thus demonstrating the historical orthodoxy of justification by faith. 

Reading Calvin’s defense against the backdrop of the current debates regarding the gospel (is the gospel the announcement that our sins can be forgiven or that Jesus is King?), has me wondering if there is some theological retrieval happening in our day. Has the news of Jesus as King and the call to radical allegiance been held in safekeeping, postliminii iure, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear? That was the sense I had while reading both “King Jesus Gospel” and “Gospel Allegiance” in recent months—a sense that the importance of allegiance to the true King is not a slide away (and down) from truth and the word of God, but a retrieval project taking us further up and further in. 

Could it be that the unrest in our nation (and beyond) with regards to racial injustice will lead to the retrieval of justice in the announcement of good news? Perhaps as the reformation retrieved the good news that Christ makes us personally just (through his righteousness received by faith alone), our historical moment will lead to the retrieval of more good news—good news that allegiance to Christ the King brings about a corporate, multi-ethnic, just society envisioned throughout the story of Scripture and promised in the song of Revelation 5:9-10: “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” 

Read the Institutes together with Jesse and Michael

On our most recent edition of the Hammer & Quill podcast (Episode 9), we discussed the books we have been enjoying or are planning to read this summer, with the hope that our conversation could serve as a guide to some good summer reading recommendations. We also discussed one of our favorite Bonhoeffer Haus practices—reading classic works of theology in community. This summer, consider joining us as we read Calvin’s Institutes, volume 1 (of 2). 

If you have ever wondered about “Calvinism,” or you want to try reading through a classic work of theology devotionally and thoughtfully—join us! Many think that Calvin’s Institutes must be dry or cold, but it is anything but. Originally written as a kind of missional and theological guide for persecuted pastors during the time of the Reformation, the Institutes are warm and devotionally rich. While you may not agree with everything the Reformer says, I think you will find it a rewarding experience. Consider the very first line: “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” From the beginning, Calvin dives deep into these two parts of wisdom. Join us as we dive in too!

Our calendar, beginning May 31st: 

Week 1: Prefatory Address to King Francis 1 of France 

Week 2: Book 1, Chapters 1-6

Week 3: Book 1, Chapters 7-12

Week 4: Book 1, Chapters 13-18

Week 5: Book 2, Chapters 1-6

Week 6: Book 2, Chapters 7-12

Week 7: Book 2, Chapters 13-17

Week 8: Book 3, Chapters 1-6

Week 9: Book 3, Chapters 7-12

Week 10: Book 3, Chapters 13-18

**We are using, and we recommend, the McNeill/Battles edition